The present invention generally relates to manufacturing, remanufacturing or repairing replaceable imaging components, and more particularly to apparatus and techniques for replacing a rotatable drum or roller, such as an organic photo conductor (OPC) drum, a toner adder roller, a developer roller, a primary charge roller, and the like, for example, of a replaceable imaging cartridge.
In the imaging industry, there is a growing market for the remanufacture and refurbishing of various types of replaceable imaging cartridges such as toner cartridges, drum cartridges, inkjet cartridges, and the like. These imaging cartridges are used in imaging devices such as laser printers, xerographic copiers, inkjet printers, facsimile machines and the like, for example. Imaging cartridges, once spent, are unusable for their originally intended purpose. Without a refurbishing process these cartridges would simply be discarded, even though the cartridge itself may still have potential life. As a result, techniques have been developed specifically to address this issue. These processes may entail, for example, the disassembly of the various structures of the cartridge, replacing toner or ink, cleaning, adjusting or replacing any worn components and reassembling the imaging cartridge.
Laser printer toner cartridges are typically composed of two portions. These sections are the waste bin assembly which houses the OPC drum and the toner hopper which houses the toner adder roller. During the remanufacturing of a laser printer toner cartridge, the OPC drum and the toner adder roller may need to be replaced due to the wear or damage of the OPC drum and the toner adder roller. Typically, the OPC drum is held in place by opposing removable plates and the toner adder roller is held in place with a removable bushing. The removable plates are typically attached to the waste bin by screws which allow a remanufacturer to easily remove at least one of the removable plates, replace the OPC drum, and reattach the removable plate. Such a technique allows for OPC drum replacement without causing damage to the toner cartridge.
In the case of certain toner cartridges, such as the Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 2600, removable plates are not utilized to secure the OPC drum in place. Rather, the OPC drum is held in place by opposing end caps which are not readily removable. These end caps are secured to the waste bin using, among other techniques, an adhesive, which prevents any easy disassembly. Moreover, forcing the removal of the end caps causes damage to the end cap and/or the waste bin. This damage results in print defects when the cartridge is reassembled due to the replacement OPC drum not being securely fastened to the waste bin housing as well as changes in the centerline of the OPC drum in relation to other cartridge components which leads to out of round rotation. Additionally, the bushing for the toner adder roller is secured in place using an adhesive and removal of this bushing may result in damage to the bushing or the toner hopper which may then result in print defects. Thus, the toner cartridge cannot be readily disassembled to allow the replacement of these components.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide systems and methods for replacing rotatable members, such as drums, rollers, and the like in a toner cartridge having rotatable member retaining elements which are fixedly secured to a portion of the toner cartridge and thus cannot be readily disassembled to allow replacement of the rotatable member.